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Salesforce Experience Cloud helps over 2,000 businesses with their help centers, customer service portals, and partner communities. Since its launch in 2014, Experience Cloud has changed how companies like Glassdoor, Poshmark, and Goodreads manage their portals. It attracts over 10 million website visits monthly and has 50 million active community members.
In our blog post, we will explain:
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What is Salesforce Experience Cloud?
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Experience Cloud key features and license pricing,
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How can you customize it for industries like real estate or property management?
Learn more: Experience The Salesforce Experience Cloud
What is Salesforce Experience Cloud?
Salesforce Experience Cloud is a cloud-based platform that connects businesses, clients, partners, and employees. It allows secure sharing of information and documents. Users can share and access data in real-time on any mobile device. Experience Cloud can be customized for any industry, whether investment or nonprofit.
Experience Cloud helps companies build communities for their customers and:
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Build stronger relationships,
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Respond to their questions in time,
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Provide more personalized customer service.
You can connect external partners or independent agents through Salesforce Experience Cloud. Experience Cloud is Salesforce's platform for creating digital experiences. It works smoothly with any solution in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Experience Cloud is flexible and can connect with a website, a Salesforce product like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Slack, or a third-party system. This connection helps centralize data and boosts productivity.
Salesforce Experience Cloud vs. Community Cloud
Many people ask if Salesforce Experience Cloud is the same as Communities. The answer is yes. In 2010, Salesforce introduced a new " Chatter " tool to help users collaborate more effectively on the platform.
Four years later, the company launched a complete product suite called Community Cloud. This suite included tools for building portals (previously known as Salesforce Portals), websites, and knowledge centers, and it already featured Chatter.
In 2021, Salesforce changed the name of Community Cloud to Experience Cloud. This change reflects Salesforce's goal of being more than just a platform for communities. Now, Salesforce focuses on creating a better digital experience.
Key Salesforce Experience Cloud Features
According to a Salesforce report, using Salesforce Experience Cloud can boost customer satisfaction by 32%. This product suite also helps:
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Resolve support tickets quicker,
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Better understand and manage customer communities,
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Increase onsite user engagement.
You can achieve all this with the full features of Experience Cloud. So, what will you find in it?
Digital Experience Management
This feature allows you to create customized user experiences. You can use data from your CRM to drive specific workflows and pull information from any source.
Knowledge Base
Experience Cloud allows you to create a central place for knowledge by sharing articles with customers and agents.
High Level of Security
Salesforce Experience Cloud offers a strong and flexible system that gives you great control over user roles, admin rights, and data sharing. You can also monitor the platform's performance and health in real-time.
Case Management
This product module helps you manage the entire case lifecycle from one system. It makes it easier to place cases and get support, which allows both partners and customers to work more efficiently.
Lightning Flow Automation
With Salesforce Experience Cloud, you can help your customers through any business process step by step. Additionally, Lightning Flow Automation streamlines onboarding, recruiting, and task automation saving you time.
Roles and Advanced Sharing
Salesforce strongly focuses on data protection. Experience Cloud allows you to create roles and permission sets that control which users can access specific data. It also makes sharing documents with customers and partners easier and helps with collaboration.
Experience Builder
With Experience Builder, you can redesign your portals and create a new digital experience. You can use pre-built components or create custom ones.
Experience Workspaces
Experience Workspaces help you manage your digital experiences, content, and administration in one place. Companies can track, analyze, and improve their experiences using customizable dashboards.
Salesforce Content Management System
You can create and save content directly on the Salesforce platform.
Topics and Recommendations
After creating the content, organize it by topics to show your audience the latest recommendations. You can base these recommendations on what is popular, the target age group, and any featured content they can follow or subscribe to.
Reports and Dashboards
The Community Management Console has dashboards that show how engaged your clients are with the community. You can analyze this data to understand your community better and improve your service.
What You Can Create with Salesforce Experience Cloud: Real Examples
Salesforce Experience Cloud lets you create digital help centers, portals, microsites, and landing pages. It also allows for creativity in building unique solutions. This discussion will explore what you can do with this platform and how its features can be used in different industries.
What You Can Create With Salesforce Experience Cloud for Different Industries
Help Center & FAQ Portal
Help Centers provide customers with quick answers through forums, self-service portals, or knowledge bases. You can also personalize the system interface by customizing the template in Experience Builder. Choose your company’s branding style or a pre-set theme matching your brand.
Property managers can use Experience Cloud as a virtual service center. They can manage service requests and answer questions about property maintenance. They can also store and share client documents and manage legal processes.
Customer Account Portals
In Experience Cloud, you can create an easy-to-use portal. This portal lets users view content, update their profiles, and manage cases and claims. Your customers will have direct access to data and processes, allowing them to find information and complete actions.
With Experience Cloud, you can build loyal communities and reward top users who support others. For example, eCommerce customers can use the platform to:
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Buy products from stores,
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Share their feedback,
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Suggest product/service improvements,
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Process warranties,
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Make self-service claims.
Salesforce Experience Cloud Partner Portal
You can create a good solution for managing your partner's collaboration. Set up training and certification programs to track how your partners are doing. Partners can:
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Streamline lead distribution in a new portal,
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Reduce lead overlap,
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Requalify leads,
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Simplify quotations.
Companies can use a central digital platform to manage many investors and growers in agriculture. They can securely share financial files and collaborate via chats or Slack communication, which helps different groups receive personalized messages. It allows you to keep all communication history in one place and quickly resolve issues as they come up. Employees can get real-time alerts when a lead turns into a sale, spot patterns in different situations, and adjust the sales process as needed.
You can teach partners automatically by using Einstein AI to suggest the right content and files they need.
Brokers can use a portal to find product information and enroll in training and certification courses to improve their knowledge. For example, Pernod Ricard, a well-known beverage company, used Experience Cloud to collaborate effectively with liquor distributors.
They built separate communities for their brands’ customers, each reflecting the unique spirit of that group.
Employee Community
Digital spaces help teams work together more effectively, especially when they are working remotely. You can organize teams based on project goals or events. Experience Cloud makes it easier to share data and documents by restricting access to only those who need it. This way, employees can collaborate on files without the risk of them getting corrupted.
Consider creating an FAQ portal or help center to provide easy access to critical information for HR, IT, and other departments. It will be a central place for storing guides and troubleshooting materials, which your employees can use when they need help.
Microsites and Landing Pages
You can create attractive microsites and landing pages to attract leads for a new product launch, an upcoming event, and more. For example, commercial real estate companies can host webinars or conferences and promote them on landing pages to share with all their partners.
Custom Solutions
Salesforce offers a wide range of customization options beyond its standard features. For example, land brokers can create detailed listings on Experience Cloud portals. These listings can work with websites, mapping services, chat features, and online forms.
Land buyers can easily find options by sorting them by Zip Code and viewing all properties within a certain distance. Agents can improve this process with a custom design that is easy to use, allows them to add necessary information, and work with clients in the system. By using a single data source, brokers can manage the sales pipeline based on price, location, and purpose.
They can customize offers for specific customers and engage them by sending relevant content with the proposal. Salesforce Experience Cloud meets various industry needs, making it a leader in portal software. However, if you have little technical experience with such projects, it’s best to leave it to professionals like Codleo.
We have over 6 years of experience creating effective Salesforce solutions based on our clients’ ideas. We have worked closely with key Salesforce Clouds since they began. It helps us understand the platform's details and how it can evolve.
With our strong background in custom software development for PropTech and CRE Tech, you can trust that you'll find the best Salesforce Experience Cloud consultant.
We will help you get the most out of Salesforce, whether you want to use the standard Experience Cloud features or create a custom solution. Our team includes over 200 certified Salesforce experts, such as consultants, developers, solution architects, business analysts, and QA professionals, who will ensure your platform runs smoothly. Learn more about the Salesforce services we offer.
Salesforce Experience Cloud Licenses Pricing Comparison
Let’s talk about Salesforce Experience Cloud license types and their costs. The good news is that if you are an experienced Salesforce user or have someone in-house who can set it up, you will only pay for the number of licenses you need. Unlike many software companies, Salesforce does not charge setup fees for new users, so the costs are clear.
If you need to adapt Salesforce Experience Cloud to meet your specific needs but lack the in-house expertise, you might have to hire a consultant for implementation. This means you will need to pay for subscriptions and customization services. Our blog post lets you learn more about the hidden costs of implementing Salesforce.
However, Experience Cloud offers three types of plans regarding licenses: Customer Communities, Partner Relationship Management, and External Apps.
Self-Service Customer Community
This plan has two options: Customer Community and Customer Community Plus.
The Customer Community costs $2 per login or $5 per monthly member.
Customer Community Plus costs $6 per login or $15 per monthly member.
Remember that all Salesforce plans must be paid upfront for the entire year.
Customer Community includes a standard set for managing client communities, such as:
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A customer portal,
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Advanced case management,
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Lightning Flow automation,
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Audience targeting,
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Automated content recommendation,
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Chatter integration.
Customer Community Plus allows users to create roles and customize sharing rules, reports, dashboards, and system administration. This version is more advanced than the cheaper option.
Partner Relationship Management
This plan has one option and costs $10 for each login or $25 for each monthly member. You need to pay the full amount for the year in advance. The plan includes:
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A pre-built partner portal feature called Partner Central Template,
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Customizable workflows for automated lead distribution and deal registration,
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Pre-designed campaigns, partner channel analytics,
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Customizable reports and dashboards,
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Automation for fund requests, approvals, and claims.
External Apps
With this pricing plan, you will pay $15 for each login or $35 for each member monthly. Using External Apps, you can create custom portals, sites, and apps, set up channel programs, and track key performance indicators (KPIs).
On top of the functionality available in previous plans, the External Apps plan allows:
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The creation of up to 100 custom objects,
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Adjustment of the platform with low-code builders,
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Facilitation of customer and partner access with access management and identity services,
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Enhancement of the platform with data storage.
All Experience Cloud licenses include access to the Salesforce Content Management System. You can create unlimited content records, submit different types of content, and use supported channels.
Final Words
Salesforce Experience Cloud is a powerful portal solution that helps manage customers and partners better. It creates an engaging experience for users. This flexible tool can be customized for any business type and aligns with industry best practices.
With Salesforce Experience Cloud, companies can boost sales by connecting employees with distributors, resellers, and suppliers all in one place.
If you want to reduce the costs of running your sales and customer support teams while improving customer satisfaction, Experience Cloud is the right choice.
If implementing and customizing our solutions overwhelms you, we can help you maximize your investment. Our experts will analyze your business needs and provide solutions that exceed your expectations. Let's begin your digital transformation today!
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